''You are batting a thousand today," Molina told her. ''First you avoid being squashed like a ladybug by an unanchored UFO; now you've anticipated the actions of two branches of the law."
"Huh?" Temple didn't mind playing dumb when she was feeling thoroughly stupefied.
Besides, she was still reeling from the close call with the runaway UFO, not to mention the threat of imminent demise while in the company, however unwanted, of Crawford Buchanan.
Imagine ending up next to that creep in the morgue!
Temple remained puzzled. Why had hotel security hustled her to this secluded office right after the mishap? She hated being pulled untimely away from the sight of Crawford Buchanan whining and threatening law suit. Dousing that legal fire was a lot more important than submitting to another police grilling. Large portions of her anatomy would soon show pemanent parallel tracks, she was sure. . . . And what was this gruesome twosome doing at the Phoenix so conveniently, anyway?
When Temple remained silent, Molina nodded at Ferraro-- great, they were in cahoots--
who went to open the door into an adjoining empty office.
Except the room wasn't empty until the man inside it walked out to join them. He struck her as a nondescript middle-aged man in a nondescript gray suit from Men's Warehouse, with a tie equally as off-the-rack, but his blue-striped shirt had a sparkling white collar. Another cop? With a subconscious urge to make a fashion statement while taking hers? Oi, her aching ankle!
Despite his snappy shirt, the new man didn't bother to say hello. He came right up to her with a grim expression, pulled a leatherette case from his inside breast suit pocket, then flipped it open in front of her nose.
Darn. Temple was too curious not to look. An unflattering head shot. An impressive seal.
Lots of tiny print.
"FBI" Temple read the big blue initials aloud to make sure that she wasn't having a dyslexic episode and it really said IBM. She wasn't. ''You've got to be kidding!" She glanced to an impassive Molina.
The man shook his head so slightly Temple hardly saw it. He wheeled a secretarial chair over the tiled floor, then sat opposite her.
''We need to talk," he suggested.
"I can do that. I could even do a song-and-dance until a couple of days ago." To demonstrate Temple hefted her still-swaddled ankle, which reposed on a pulled-out desk drawer. "So how have I offended this time?"
Amusement flickered behind the stiff, burglar-bar eyelashes shading his steel-gray eyes.
Flickered and went out.
''Apparently you're a repeat offender around this town," he said dead-pan.
''Only at being innocent," Temple replied.
"Unfortunately, she is. So far." Molina had vouched for Temple out of the blue, sitting on the edge of the desk. "Harmless, I mean. Miss Barr's only crime has been acting as a magnet for trouble."
"Murderous trouble?" the FBI man inquired.
Molina nodded.
"Is this about that dead man that fell on the craps table?" Temple dared to ask.
Lieutenant Molina pounced like Midnight Louie on a trespassing cricket unwise enough to announce its presence with a friendly chirp. "You understand something about that we should know?"
Of course Temple did. However, she wasn't about to announce to all and sundry that the second casino murder victim was also connected to a man of her acquaintance. In fact, the Crystal Phoenix victim was much more certainly attached to Matt Devine than the long-dead unidentified man at the Goliath was affixed to Max Kinsella.
While Temple stonewalled, internecine rivalry saved her.
The FBI agent shook his head at Molina, as if to shut her up, before concentrating the full power of his drill-press gaze on Temple. "The murder is . . . under control, Miss Barr. This interview concerns that skit you wrote for the Gridiron."
"My Gridiron skit? You've got to be--" She decided not to accuse the man of kidding again.
He didn't look like he had a sense of humor large enough to permit a discreet chuckle.
None of them looked particularly amused. Temple glanced from one sober official face to the next, searching for a quirk of the humanity that she knew had to be there. It was absent without leave in every case.
"My Gridiron skit?" Anxiety had pushed her voice into its froggiest register. "It's just the usual satire."
Ferraro edged closer, until he hung over the FBI man's gray wool blend shoulder. "What's so funny about the mob taking over a major Vegas hotel?"
"I made that up. I was playing on tired Vegas cliches."
"'You and somebody else," Molina put in darkly.
Temple jerked her head in that direction. Maybe she could get a little female solidarity going here. "That's what I do. I'm a PR person. I make things up. Based on the facts, of course, but I slant 'em and spin 'em and shake 'em up until they stand up and sing 'Dixie.' My skit merely exaggerated that sort of thing. Humor is exaggeration. Nothing in that skit is reality-based in the slightest."
''We're pretty sure," Molina said ponderously, more for the benefit of her colleagues than Temple, "that the Goliath murder a few months back was part of whatever caused this later murder, part of the same conspiracy."
"Conspiracy?" Temple squeaked. She knew that racketeering and conspiracy were charges that fell under FBI jurisdiction.
The agent nodded, watching Temple like a hawk would if she were a rainbow trout skimming too close to the surface. "I understand that you were associated with the suspected mastermind of the Goliath . . . incident."
Max? Oh, come on. "So then I went and spilled the whole scheme in a Gridiron skit, which the entire town will see in a couple of weeks? I don't think so."
"You're working at the Crystal Phoenix now," Molina pointed out helpfully.
"Yes, I am."
"Where another dead guy," Ferraro growled, "dropped from the Eye in the Sky like a crocodile tear."
Temple frowned. Same M.O., all right. "You . . . think whatever was up at the Goliath is gonna go down"--God, what a trendy expression!--"at the Phoenix!"
Her last supposition brought nods all around, whether of agreement or simple satisfaction that Temple had committed her thoughts to incriminating sound bites was debatable.
''Somebody up there''--Lieutenant Molina's luxurious eye brows lilted toward the ceiling--
''certainly doesn't want your skit, or you, doing business as usual."
"This skit is harmless fun," Temple protested again, truly confused, not to mention worried by this triumvirate of solemn law enforcement types.
"You haven't lived in Las Vegas very long," Molina informed her, "but let me assure you that
'fun' here isn't always as harmless as you and twenty-four million other tourists would like to think. Las Vegas isn't Wonderland, or even Disneyland. It makes its money from the art of separating ordinary people from an extraordinary amount of money by wrapping the process in expensive, glitzy paper. All of these architecturally overblown hotels, the acres of neon, the new virtual reality amusement attractions add up to a multimillion-dollar carnival midway that stays in one place. And that gives the sideshow operators very high stakes in the Las Vegas image, especially now that family-rated entertainment is becoming the name of the marketing game.
You don't survive in this billion-dollar melee without a lot of brass, especially on your knuckles.
And you don't tweak the tails of these sacred cash cows without risking an annoyed kick or two. In this town, you don't kick sand in the Sphinx's face and you don't step on an Elvis imitator's blue suede shoes."
Temple contemplated the blank white ceiling to which her attention had been drawn by the notion of a "Somebody Sinister Up There" who didn't like her. That "Somebody" apparently hadn't liked the two dead men, either. She frowned.
"So something in my skit riled some power-that-be in the bottom line?"
"Could be," Molina folded her arms. "Or it could be that whoever's behind these hotel deaths is making the accountants nervous and your skit is the straw that broke the camel's back."